My history of PDS: Public Displays of Singing

I freely admit to PDA -- Public Displays of Affection -- with my wife Jane.

I am more prone, however, to PDS -- Public Displays of Singing.

Sometimes I wonder in my third act of careers (currently I’m in Act II as a freelance writer after a long Act I career in newspapers) whether to perform as a singer at whatever local bars and restaurants would have me and my band, which consists of Martha, my 46-year-old acoustic guitar.

Lord knows I do enough singing in public as it is now, why not get paid for it?

I have a lot of music in my head and often it just starts coming out of my mouth - and it doesn’t really matter where me and my mouth happens to be.

Partly it’s genetic.

My Dad was a PDSer. He was a U.S. Air Force officer teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy back in the 1960s and the story goes that he walked into class singing the Beach Boys version of “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena”.

He sang: “It’s the Little Old Lady from Pasadena” and the cadets returned with “Go granny, go granny, go granny go.”

My first introduction to my wife Jane came from a PDS moment.

The company I worked for in 1998 was in the process of buying the newspaper in Portsmouth, N.H.,where Jane worked. During one of many transition meetings I led that and that Jane was part of, I walked into the conference room singing the Barenaked Ladies’ song “If I Had a Million Dollars”.

Public Displays of Singing don’t count in the places where it’s perfectly OK to sing out loud -- like home or at church.

My most frequent PSD are at the gym, where I try to ease the rigor of exercise with music via earbuds from a first generation iPod.

All my favorite music - 1,545 songs - is on my iPod. That’s 4.3 days of singing that I could do since i know the words to each of those songs.

So it’s pretty easy for me while I’m at the gym to get lost in the music. And once that happens there may be a little air guitar, there might be some air drumming, and there will certainly be out-loud singing, not arena-volume singing but loud enough to get the occasional stare or wry smile from someone nearby.

I’m beyond the age of embarrassment. Music, to me, is one of the great gifts that humankind has given itself. I’m not ashamed to celebrate that  with my PDS.

Carrying a tune

There are public displays of affection.

And there are public displays of singing.

I’m occasionally guilty of the former, frequently guilty of the latter.

I sing in public, and not always where and when it’s appropriate.

My wife Jane, with whom I am guilty of the occasional PDA, has an early memory of the singing me, long before we ever thought of engaging in PDAs.

I came walking into a conference room for a meeting singing the Barenaked Ladies song “If I had $1000000”.

I didn’t go into that meeting consciously singing. It was just something that was in my head that happened to come out of my mouth.

Frankly, the note doesn’t fall far from the tree.

There is a story of my Dad walking into a classroom at the U.S. Air Force Academy where he taught English through the 1960s.

He was singing “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” by the Beach Boys, with cadets joining in the “Go granny, go granny, go granny, go” refrain.

What’s odd is that I’m not much of a singer in church, however.

I like church songs, especially Christmas songs. But most are written and played in the wrong key for me … way too high for this alto voice.

I don’t want to be singing treble in church like Neil Young.

I’m most guilty of public displays of singing while working out at the gym.

I’m dialed into the music on my iPod through a set of Bose earbuds.

Running on the treadmill, seeking the help of Green Day or Mark Knopfler or the Saw Doctors to push, pull or drag me through a run, I barely have enough breath to survive the run, much less have enough breath to sing.

But afterwards, when I get into the weight machine room, I can lose track of where I am and start singing out loud.

I tell ya, within the earbuds and the music, my own voice sounds really, really good: Perfect pitch, perfect harmony.

So why is it that, when my singing is a little too exuberant, I get glances and occasional smiles from others in the room?

It’s probably one of those I’m-so-embarrassed-for-you-grins, especially if the song happens to be a show tune.

But the show must go on. I have a modest 1,480 songs to get through on my iPod.

My favorite Winter Olympics moment

I enjoyed the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

There were parts that annoyed me, particularly the tape delay broadcast of events that could have been aired live, especially during the weekends.

But the good outweighed the bad.

I'm a skier, a former racer, so I really enjoyed the coverage of Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn and the rest of the ski racers.

In fact, I'd like to think I identified more with the ski racers than anyone else who competed in the Vancouver games. I had fantasized for a long time as a kid that one day I'd be standing in the start house of an Olympic ski race.

But it's curious what age will do to you.

Instead of identifying with the Bode or Vonn I took a real liking to snowboarder Kelly Clark.

And it was because she sang.

If you watched the coverage of the women's snowboarding halfpipe competition then you caught Clark singing out load to the music on her iPod before she dropped into the halfpipe for her run. The viewing audience couldn't hear her iPod tunes, of course, all we could hear was Kelly blithely singing along ... and she was wonderfully awful.

It was snowboarding and karaoke rolled into a single event.

She can't carry a tune to save her life, but it was so enjoyable to watch her get into her competitive mode by singing away to the music we couldn't hear.

I liked this moment a lot because I could identify with Kelly.

The reality is that I'm more like Kelly, singing along to my iPod at moments that might be inappropriate, than I am like Bode hurtling down a mountain at 60-plus miles an hour.

My days of complete abandon on skis are long gone (more like cautious abandon these days), but my days of abandon singing along with my iPod are not ... far from it, in fact.

I listen to my iPod while I work out at the gym and, like Kelly, when I get into the zone of what I'm doing I tend to sing along to my music. Most times I'll catch myself, realize I'm amongst a group of people, and look around to see if anyone's noticing. Usually, most everyone else is locked into their own music with their own ear buds, they're just not singing karaoke like I am.

But the momentary embarrassment passes, and I'll continue my reps and my 4/4 beat with Green Day or The Who or Mark Knopfler or whoever.

At least I can carry a tune, at least I think I sound pretty good as I belt out "Dead Flowers" along with the Rolling Stones.